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Welcome back to HEATED! I’m back from birthday break and ready to roll. Thank you so much for the well wishes and fantastic story ideas in last week’s paid subscriber forum.
A few notes about upcoming events! If you’re in New York City tomorrow (Thursday, 10/23) at 1pm EST, you should come to this really cool discussion at NYU on the ethics of covering climate change in this political moment. I’ll be tackling some of the beat’s thorniest questions with New York Times climate journalist Somini Sengupta, Inside Climate News publisher David Sassoon, and Dan Fagin, the director of NYU’s Science, Health and Environment reporting program. Attendance is free, just make sure you pre-register here. If you can’t be there in person, you can livestream it here. Video of the event will be archived here.
Also, on Friday (10/24), I’ll be at the annual Yale Global Justice Program Conference, speaking alongside Bill McKibben and Inside Climate News executive editor Vernon Loeb about the role, responsibilities, and challenges of environmental journalism today. You can find directions for registration and zoom links here.
I’m genuinely honored to be able to participate in these events alongside such giants of climate journalism. You all give me the platform to be able to do this, so thank you. Hope to see some of you there!
What’s “essential” to Trump’s EPA? More mercury pollution.
As thousands of EPA workers are sent home during the shutdown, the ones dismantling mercury rules for coal plants are still clocking in.
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The Environmental Protection Agency’s work protecting clean air and water is grinding to a halt.
As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, thousands of EPA workers are receiving notice they’ll be sent home. Furlough notices are “widespread” across the EPA, E&E News reported on Monday, “including a large percentage of staffers in EPA’s air and water offices.”
The exact number of furloughed EPA employees is about 4,000, or about 27 percent of the agency’s workforce, Politico reported. The agency would not confirm or deny that number. (Asked for details about which EPA employees have been sent home, the EPA’s press secretary refused, telling Inside Climate News it was “a ridiculous question to ask.”)
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More employees are likely to be sent home as the shutdown continues. The Trump administration’s latest shutdown contingency plan considers nearly 90 percent of the EPA’s workforce to be “non-essential” or “partially essential,” and therefore eligible for furlough. “Many activities will halt, including research and the publication of research results, and the issuance of new grants, contracts and permits,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Critically, civil enforcement inspections—on-site visits to facilities to check their compliance with environmental regulations—will also cease.”
Furloughs are also just the latest blow to the EPA’s workforce. Before the shutdown, 4,000 EPA employees had already been fired or had taken a buyout. The agency’s climate offices and its scientific research arm are also in the process of being disbanded. And the bleeding is expected to continue if and when the government reopens; The Trump administration has proposed a 55 percent cut to EPA funding in its 2026 budget request.
But there is at least one group of EPA employees who the Trump administration considers “essential,” and are still on the job: the people making it legal for coal plants to release more mercury into the environment.
The detail was first reported Friday by Lisa Friedman at the New York Times. Des